Google X Director Babak Parviz, who led the development of Google Glass, is leaving the Mountain View search giant for a new job at Amazon.
Parviz shared the news on his Google+ page this weekend. He did not reveal any details about his new position with Amazon, but posted a picture of the Amazon logo and the words "status: super excited." He also updated his "About" section to note that he "led a few efforts at Google (among them, Google Glass and Google Contact Lenses are public so far :) prior to moving to Amazon and work on a few other things now…"
What those "other things" are, is still a mystery.
The departure comes after Parviz last week discussed Google Glass at the Wearable Technologies Conference, where he predicted wearable headsets like Google Glass won't go mainstream for another 15 years.
Besides Google Glass, Parviz also founded and led Google's smart contact lens project. The lenses contain a "tiny wireless chip" and sensors that measure the glucose level in tears to calculate blood sugar levels in people with diabetes.
Parviz led the Glass team up until May, when former Disney Store chief creative officer and marketing exec Ivy Ross took over.
Google X focuses on "moonshot" projects - everything from self-driving cars and helper robots to Internet-enabled refrigerators and even space elevators. Though that might seem contrary to Google's core mission, co-founder Sergey Brin recently revealed he has actually removed certain projects from Google X if they are too in line with Google's core mission.
Hopefully Parviz's transition to Amazon will go more smoothly than Zoltan Szabadi's jump from Amazon to Google. Amazon recently filed suit in Seattle, claiming that Szabadi's switch to Google violates the "non-compete, non-solicitation, and trade secret restrictions" of the employment contract he previously signed with Amazon.
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